An aerial photo shot Thursday shows the remains of a nursing home (left), apartment complex and the fertilizer plant.

Photo: Tony Gutierrez, Associated Press

An aerial photo shot Thursday shows the remains of a nursing home...

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This is all that remains of an apartment complex located next to the fertilizer plant. About 200 people were hurt in the blast.

Photo: Erich Schlegel, Getty Images

This is all that remains of an apartment complex located next to...

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Mattresses are loaded onto a truck by volunteers helping out at a distribution center where supplies like water and clothing, including medical supplies, are being dropped off or picked up as needed, in West, Texas, on April 19 2013, two days after a deadly fertilizer plant blast occured. While rescuers in Texas were set to return to the rubble in their continuing search for survivors after the massive blast killed as many as 15 people and destroyed dozens of homes, all roads leading to the area of destruction have been closed off and manned by various state authorities controlling the entry and exit of vehicles and people. AFP PHOTO/Frederic J. BROWNFREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images

Two days after the explosion at a fertilizer plant in this town in central Texas, the death toll rose to 14, but with the search of damaged structures nearly finished by Friday afternoon, only a few people were still presumed missing, officials said.

Earlier in the day, after he had toured the site, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said 60 people remained unaccounted for, an estimate that included many people who had been reported missing by relatives unable to locate them immediately after the blast. But Judge Scott Felton of McLennan County, who joined Gov. Rick Perry at an afternoon news conference, said he would be "surprised if it's more than a few."

'Absolute devastation'

Perry said there was "absolute devastation" in the area around the fertilizer plant, adding, "It's going to be a long recovery."

Through the night and much of the day, the authorities removed bodies from the rubble, most of them firefighters and other emergency responders who were the first to arrive at the plant. One of them was Capt. Kenny Harris of the Dallas Fire-Rescue, a married father of three who had been off-duty when he learned of the fire and went there to help, a spokesman for Dallas Fire-Rescue said.

Sgt. Jason Reyes of the Texas Department of Public Safety said about 200 people were injured and that at least 50 homes were damaged by the explosion, which was caused by a fire inside the plant Wednesday evening. The plant is surrounded by houses, a 50-unit apartment complex, three schools and a nursing home.

Investigators from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board and other federal agencies swarmed the remains of the plant on Friday. They focused on a pair of reinforced steel tanks that stored anhydrous ammonia, an inexpensive liquid fertilizer commonly used across rural America. Under some conditions, it can turn into flammable gas.

Last summer, the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Material Administration fined the plant, a retail and warehouse facility for grains and fertilizer, $10,000 for safety violations, citing inadequate markings on the tanks and deficient transportation plans for the fertilizer. Farmers hauled it away from the plant in tanks pegged to the backs of their pickup trucks. The fine was settled for $5,250, according to agency records.

"The experts don't know what happened, and I am going to leave it to the experts," the plant's foreman, Jerry Sinkale, said in an interview Friday.

The investigation, Reyes said, would most likely continue for at least several days.

Outside St. Mary's Catholic Church, where volunteers grilled ribs and sausages for the rescuers, Dr. George Smith recalled how the flames brightened the darkening sky over the plant, which is near his house and across from the nursing home where he was the medical director. All but one of the 127 nursing home residents survived the fire and explosion, aided in their escape by friends, relatives, strangers and rescue workers.

A broadcast on the police scanner, which many residents have in their homes, said, "Anybody who can, please, go help at the rest home," recalled Dorothy Warren, 63, who tried to make her way to the scene. Warren was stopped at one of the roadblocks that quickly sprouted here, she said. The roadblocks were still in place on Friday afternoon.

Smith said nursing home workers had a well-rehearsed evacuation plan in case of a fire at the plant: They shut off the air-conditioning system, placed wet towels under doors to keep out the fumes and called school buses to come pick up the residents.

"We were thinking of a fire, not an explosion," said Smith, who got a gash on his nose from the debris from the blast. "So we just had to wing it."

Towels under doors

He ordered one of the nurses to get on the intercom and "tell everyone to go to Station 1," the section of the nursing home farthest from the burning plant. He put towels under the front doors while the nurses, at the back of the building, set up wheelchairs for residents who could not walk. Then, Smith and the nurses got the people who came by to help in the evacuation to serve as escorts, leading the residents to a community center nearby.

The only death, of a man "who was very sick," happened on the way there, Smith said.

His eyes welled up and his voice broke as he added, "I find comfort in the fact that I may have helped saved some lives."

Throughout the town on Friday, residents held on to the good news out of the nursing home - any good news, like the story of a woman who saw a neighbor she had presumed dead walk through the doors of the town's post office, which was open for business and became a sort of joyous gathering spot.

Many people displaced by the explosion took shelter not at the community center, where cots had been set up for them, but at the homes of friends and family who still had roofs over their heads.